Category Archives: Time

Past Past

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In another forum, I was asked how you know a memory is a past life and not imagination or perhaps resonating with some general past event. I’ve spoken on this subject here before, but thought this might be useful here again. There are a number of things that make past lives quite distinct from what you might dream or imagine. Certainly, if you just have a fleeting scene, there is little to differentiate it except maybe a vague feeling. And as you say, it could be some resonating. But while dreams tend to repeat a little then end, past lives … Continue Reading… →

Bits of Time

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Time is a very curious thing. Some say it’s an illusion but I’d suggest it’s better to understand it as an experiential effect. Fundamentally, the seed of time arises in the initial dynamics of creation. Awareness curves back on itself and becomes self-aware. In the subtle space between awareness and itself is born space and in the process of recognizing itself, time. Time on this level is a reflection of the flow of awareness, a dynamic of experience. Individually, however, we experience time from a focal point of attention. Thus, we notice a series of sequential experiences: this, then this, … Continue Reading… →

Yukteswar’s Yugas

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I’ve occasionally mentioned the Yugas here. Basically, it’s a Vedic understanding of the cycles of time. Just as we have a cycle of hours, days, years, and centuries, the Vedas also chart ages (as in Age of Aquarius), yugas, cycles of creation, and more. In the West, we have a rather heavily embedded meme telling us we started out as hunter-gatherers/cavemen and have evolved linearly from there into progressively better life. This worldview informs historic researchers, who almost always ascribe prior cultures as more primitive, sometimes in spite of evidence to the contrary. If we don’t understand it, it’s considered … Continue Reading… →

Knowing Death

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One of the curious things about some spiritual communities is that while they speak in great detail about higher states of consciousness, they barely touch on death. While they consider exalted states of being highly knowable, they may argue that death is unknowable. Now this is to some extent understandable. Death is after all one of our deepest fears, perhaps second only to our fear arising from being separated from source. But if you consider that we’ve all been through a number of incarnations before, we’ve obviously experienced death quite a few times. While we may not remember, that’s not … Continue Reading… →

On Death

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It’s curious how life tends to bring certain kinds of events in batches. I suppose this is because when a certain kind of energy arises, related sorts of actions transpire. This can be due to how our attention is or the trends of time and local area awareness. Recently, within days of each other, several people close to me experienced a health crisis that brought them close to death. One recovered quickly, another I arranged long-term recovery support for, and the third is in a hospice. The third is a very spiritual person having a very conscious death. It has … Continue Reading… →

Back Again

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Back Again

Photo by gin_able Recently I’ve written about death and rebirth in Coming Back to Past Lives and What’s After and Before. Meanwhile, over on Tom Stine’s blog, he wrote a third post around this subject, this one quoting I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj. Nisargadatta goes into the raw simplicity of it, describing how memory and unfulfilled desires move one forward into rebirth. But he observes that the person is not reborn but rather dies for good. This raises a couple of interesting points, some of which were explored in comments there. As Robert observed, many terms like soul and … Continue Reading… →

What’s After and Before

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What’s After and Before

Photo by Giampaolo Macorig Recently, there’s been some action here and on some related blogs on Past Lives. In the post on Self Effort, I referred to reading the Yog Vasishta. In the story of Lila, Vasishta touches on the subject of past lives and death in a way I thought illuminating. The gist of the story of Lila is that a holy man has a dream of being a king. His wife asks the goddess Saraswati not to let his spirit leave the house on his death. This is granted. But the spirit lives another long life within that … Continue Reading… →

Coming Back to Past Lives

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In the past, I have written about Deep Memory, Time, and The Past. Over on Tom Stine’s blog, he raised the subject of past lives / reincarnation.  It’s an intriguing subject I’ve skimmed over in some posts like the above. Tom makes an important point that Past Lives are not truth and can be a barrier too it. He also observes that past lives are simply memory. While I agree with the basic point, there is more going on than just random recall. I thought it was time to talk about it more. Firstly, anyone who says they were famous … Continue Reading… →

Time changes everything

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Time changes everything

Back in Time, (yuk yuk) I spoke about the nature of time, its source and how past and future are both here, now. But thats pretty abstract and not the average experience. I’ve also spoken about history, the way time cycles, patterns in time and future trends. But I have not touched on how we experience the passage of time. Thats an interesting one. Photo by * 7 We can say that up until a certain point in our evolution, our inner awareness experiences through our physical body and senses. Our senses take data from vibrations in the air, photons … Continue Reading… →

The Roots of Fear

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The Roots of Fear

photo at Burning Man ’06 by herby fr Animals naturally experience fear as a concern for their well-being. But at root, they move to the impulse of nature. They move where consciousness takes them. Only domesticated animals, raised in close proximity with humans, exhibit the side effects of ongoing fear like worry and anxiety. They are in effect conditioned by humans, just as we condition our children. Humans can sit in that unique spot in awareness where they are aware enough to project their ideas into the future but not quite aware enough to realize the folly of trying to … Continue Reading… →

The past

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The past

hmmm – OK, first thing to touch on is about personalities. From a higher perspective, we discover that the “person” we thought we were is really just a series of personalities, each with their own story. As we move through life, we shift them according to circumstances. We pop up with the dad model, then the worker, then the jock, then lover… Each building on our past. As we become more self-aware, we may follow the thread back to where these stories originated. Parental experiences. First relationships. Where we had positive or negative feedback, and so forth. But we also … Continue Reading… →